This week on TPMCafe's America Abroad, the bloggers are talking about...
 
Is the Bush Foreign Policy Revolution Over?
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for more than three hours on Wednesday, addressing progress, or the lack thereof, in Iraq.  Rice's list of priorities in Iraq was less ambitious than it had been in the past; she called for "positive potential for democratic change" and improving financial conditions to develop "a sense of hope."  America Abroad's Ivo Daalder noted, "The limited nature of these objectives suggests that the administration may finally be realizing the extraordinary disaster we're in and is trying, desperately, to find a way to declare victory so we can get out."  Indeed, Daalder and fellow blogger James Lindsay had predicted the death of the Bush Administration's first term foreign policy strategy before Rice testified on Capitol Hill.   "A president embattled at home and abroad will concentrate on those few things he must do to protect his legacy," they wrote.  Nancy Soderberg recommended Jonathan Tepperman's New York Times piece on the foreign policy books that helped the Bush Administration "sustain the myth of their successful world view."  Like Daalder and Lindsay, Soderberg did not agree with everything the Secretary of State said before Congress this week but wondered if the Bush Administration's "rose colored glasses are coming off" at long last.  While her fellow bloggers were charting the downfall of President Bush's foreign policy, Anne-Marie Slaughter called on leaders to consider a foreign policy vision for the future that would deal with the new threats we face, "from nuclear terrorism to bird flu to growing inequality between the winners and losers from globalization, we must be able to define and pursue such a course over the coming decades."

I'll certainly read the article on Brent Scowcroft when it comes out, but I feel compelled to at least semi-dissent from the heaping of praise upon the likes of Scowcroft, Larry Wilkerson, Richard Haas, and other Republicans who've started speaking out against the Bush administration lately. Everything they say could have been said 12-18 months ago when it would have made a difference for the future of the country. But that would have meant taking fire from the then-intact conservative attack machine, and gotten them labeled as bad party men. Instead of speaking out when Bush was strong and trying to weaken him, they've waited until Bush is weak and decided to pile-on in an effort to save their own reputations.

Better late than never is a true enough adage, I suppose, but it's actually pretty shabby behavior. It also tells you a lot about the way Washington operates and the sort of dysfunctional culture that deserves a lot of blame for the unfortunate circumstances in which the country now finds itself. See also Richard Holbrooke's excellent op-ed on some related points. Richard Clark, by contrast, offered a study in trying to do the right thing when it mattered.

Arguing within the progressive family about foreign policy is fun, but watching conservatives rend each other's flesh is funner. Yesterday's Washington Post reported that as head of the Texas Bar Association, Harriet Miers supported affirmative action, at least for private law firms. Indeed, in pursuit of diversity "under her leadership the organization embraced racial and gender set-asides and set numerical targets." Numerical targets being, of course, the dread quotas. Let the freaking out begin.

Note especially Stanley Kurtz hard-to-justify view that "no other issue is more important" to him than affirmative action which, apparently, almost single-handedly turned him to the right.

Just when I start to feel proud of my home state again, first for having the DA who indicted DeLay and then for being home to the incredible Houston Astros, now playing in their first World Series, I stupidly watch Meet the Press and am reminded of all the other yahoos that have come out of Texas. Go below the fold for an excerpt from the transcript where she compares government officials facing possible indictment in the Plame investigation to... Martha Stewart (!), since both are victims of activist judges and disreputable lawyering, of course.

52-17 quite a thumping. Coaches allowed Arrington to play. He runs very fast and hits hard, producing visually exciting impact. However, he slipped out of position at least three times that I saw, and I didn't get to review the game films. The coaches will be upbraiding him, while of course allowing him to play in the upcoming contest against the Giants. The Skins must win this match against their divisional rival.
The obvious lesson of today's game was that the Niners truly are one of the worst teams in professional football, and the Skins are becoming well-coached, so that they crush those who ought to be crushed.
The secondary lesson is that QB Brunell has continued to perform quite spectacularly. He throws with accuracy, speed, and analytical insight.
Finally, Coach "Joe" Gibbs calls, or has assistants who call, a very smart game, usually achieving one-step-aheadness.
Because football is the only sport that resembles foreign policy of the grand game sort, it is a long but permitted segue to note that the United States play callers at the present time are tragically one step behind. Wilkerson, Scowcroft, and others are speaking out because they fear what the Administration will do in its remaining three years, given that the talent level will continue to decrease and the fundamental strategies are terribly wrong-headed.

Jeffrey Goldberg has written a materful article, "Breaking Ranks:  What Turned Brent Scowcroft Against the Bush Administration?" which appears in the October 31 edition of The New Yorker (scheduled to hit news stands tomorrow).

I have the article.  It is stunning.  Even Bush 41 nudges his son's administration with some passages, that though elliptical, are clearly criticisms of George W. Bush's penchant to have followers who affirm his views rather than challenge them.

Here is one short passage from the Jeffrey Goldberg piece to give some flavor:

When I asked Scowcroft if the son was different from the father, he said, "I don't want to go there," but his dissatisfaction with the son's agenda could not have been clearer. When I asked him to name issues on which he agrees with the younger Bush, he said, "Afghanistan." He paused for twelve seconds. Finally, he said, "I think we're doing well on Europe," and left it at that.

I have excerpted many other clips from this important article here, but I recommend that you read every last word of the piece when it comes out.

In 1985, New York Times publisher Punch Sulzberger fired Sydney Schanberg because the metropolitan affairs columnist, in one of his many diatribes about Westway, had accused his own paper of being "venal." Punch was a man of great tolerance but he had no patience for The New York Times "peeing all over itself," as he put it in a memo.

How times have changed.